Close shaves and lots of laughs in delightful ‘39 Steps’ at the Norris Center

Let’s say the police are after you, but you’re innocent, and they’re actually not police but enemy spies, and your only means of escape is to jump out of a window. But you’re actually an actor, and your window is a picture frame, and your show is filled with delicious silliness. You have no choice but to drop the frame over your head and “slip out” by stepping over it, thus escaping your pursuers and getting laughs.

That’s only one of many close shaves and one of many laughs in “The 39 Steps” at Norris Center for the Performing Arts through Feb. 9. The film by Alfred Hitchcock, based on John Buchan’s novel, somehow bears up under this telling, adapted by Patrick Barlow.

In it, handsome, comfortably situated Richard Hannay (Jeffrey Cannata) complains of deep boredom in 1930s London. Adventure finds him. After a glamorous secret agent (Karen Jean Olds) begs shelter in his flat, she is fatally stabbed, but not before instructing him to disband an enemy spy ring and handing him geography’s hugest map.

Per her last words, Hannay heads for Scotland, land of chilly homes and impenetrable accents. On his trip, he encounters a beautiful, spirited woman (Olds again), as well as undergarment salesmen, policemen, a professed professor and his very icy wife, two decrepit country squires and dozens more characters — all played by Kenny Landmon and Louis Lotorto.

Half the fun of this production is watching the actors dance in and out of the versatile costumes (design and coordination by Diana Mann) as they switch voices and accents and walks and still keep flawless comedic timing.

Despite its pedigree and setup, this is not a director-proof play. Ken Parks balances the Hitchcockian thriller with British comedy. He sets his production on a bare stage, where every tension-building scene gets created with minimal props. As the police chase Hannay atop hurtling railway carriages, the actors are leaping from suitcase to suitcase, rapidly flapping their topcoats. A squeaking door is created with just the handle. Scotland’s iconic Forth Bridge is created with just three ladders.

Parks choreographs his actors to fumble with recalcitrant props and adjust pieces of the set that don’t arrive in time — all permitted by Barlow’s script, which gives directors much creative license.

Parks embellishes the script via accents that grow thicker over the evening. Someone embellished the script via updates, substituting, for a list of towns passed, such locales as Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, as the strangers on a train hurtle northwards, if not exactly north by northwest.

The quartet of actors, though each possesses manifold and prestigious credits, works as a longtime team, evidencing either very long hours of rehearsal or very smart work by all.

There are morals in the storytelling here, too. One might be about the perils of believing people and of not believing them. Another is probably about the joy of finding just the right co-adventurer in life, so both of you can end up sitting at home by your twinkling Christmas tree.